Beethoven String Quartet

One of the most brilliant works in the quartet literature, an exciting new composition based on it, and a virtuoso award-winning ensemble: the Aris Quartet's GENUIN album Attacca bursts with energy from the very first moment. Highly acclaimed with awards such as "Echo Rising Stars" 2019, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, and "New Generations Artists" 2018, the Aris Quartet juxtaposes Beethoven's "Russian" Quartet Op. 59, No. 1, with Gerald Resch's String Quartet No. 3. Gerald Resch's intention was to build a kind of "adjacent property" to Beethoven. The Aris Quartet vividly brings out both the connections and differences with its nuanced playing.

Writing in 29:4 about the Hagen’s fine CD accounts of Beethoven Quartets Nos. 12 and 15, I noted two salient features of its approach: a sonority that in its freedom from lushness and excessive vibrato echoes (without duplicating) “period” sonority; and a style suggestive of how the music is far closer to the composer’s middle period than we often think. In a similar vein, this is a tough, aggressive No. 16, yet one tempered by delicacy where apt and projected with sensitivity to the music’s pointed humor—a performance style that one probably was not likely to encounter 50 years ago. And fine though the Beethoven is, the Mozart may be even better, as commanding and sensitive account of the work as I have ever heard. For one thing, Sabine Meyer is superb, a true virtuoso who is capable of rendering the music’s gentler moments with a tender delicacy that is as arresting as her rapidly articulated runs in which every note is given its clearly articulated due.